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Agence France-Presse

Bangladesh has executed a military captain less than a week after he was arrested after nearly 25 years on the run over the assassination of the country’s founding leader, a minister said Sunday.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was killed along with most of his family in a military coup on August 15, 1975, nearly four years after he led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan.
In 1998 Abdul Majed was sentenced in absentia to death along with a dozen other army officers over the murders.
Bangladesh’s Supreme Court upheld the verdict in 2009 and five of the killers were executed several months later.
On Tuesday, counterterrorism police officers arrested Majed as he rode a rickshaw in the capital early in the morning.
Bangladesh prison authorities carried out Majed’s execution by hanging days later, after the country’s president rejected a mercy plea from the convicted killer.
Bangladesh opposition leader given life over grenade attack that injured PM
“He was hanged to death at 12.01am Sunday (1801GMT),” law minister Anisul Huq said, adding the execution took place at the country’s largest prison, just outside the capital Dhaka.
Majed is believed to have fled to India in 1996. He returned to Bangladesh last month.
Majed’s wife met him at the prison one last time on Saturday evening when the prison authorities had scheduled his execution.
Security has been tightened at the areas outside the prison at Keraniganj town, with scores of policemen patrolling the jailgate, police chief of Dhaka district Maruf Hossain Sorder said.
Prime Minister Hasina, whose public celebrations this year for the centenary of her father’s birth have been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic, was in Europe with her sister at the time of the 1975 attack.
In a video message, the country’s home minister this week called Majed’s arrest “the best gift of Mujib centenary year”.
What Hasina’s victory means for the India-China power play in South Asia
The road to getting justice for the 1975 assassination was long, and the killing continues to poison Bangladesh’s murky political scene to this day.
Successive post-coup military governments rewarded the killers with diplomatic positions and several of them were even allowed to form a political party and contest polls in the 1980s.
For 21 years, an indemnity law enacted by the post-coup government prevented a prosecution of the killers. This was only overturned after Hasina came to power in 1996.
Hasina has also long accused Ziaur Rahman, president from 1977 until his assassination in 1981, of orchestrating her father’s murder.
This is denied by his widow Khaleda Zia, prime minister from 1991-1996 and 2001-2006 and Hasina’s former ally turned arch enemy who was convicted of corruption in 2018, charges she said were fabricated.


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Bangladesh

Hanged at midnight: Bangladesh executes killer of founding leader

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was killed along with most of his family in a military coup on August 15, 1975. Photo: AFP

Bangladesh opposition leader given life over 2004 grenade attack that injured Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

Bangladesh police inspect pedestrians after a court handed down verdicts over a grenade attack in Dhaka in 2004. Photo: AFP

Bangladeshi security personal escort convicted of the grenade attack in a van near the special court, following verdict in the cases filed over August 21 grenade attack, in Dhaka on October 10, 2018. - A Bangladesh court on October 10 sentenced a top opposition leader to life in prison and sentenced 19 more people to death over a 2004 grenade attack on the current prime minister. (Photo by Munir UZ ZAMAN / AFP)

In this April 2, 2007 file photo, Bangladeshi police escort Tarique Rahman, to Dhaka Court, in Dhaka. A Bangladeshi tribunal has sentenced 19 people to death and 19 others to life in prison for a deadly attack at a political rally of then-opposition leader and now Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The tribunal in Dhaka delivered a verdict Wednesday on nearly 50 cases stemming from the grenade attack 14 years ago that killed two dozen people and wounded hundreds. Two former Cabinet ministers were condemned to death. Jailed former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's son Tarique Rahman received a life sentence. Eleven defendants were given six months to two years in prison. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman, File)

What Bangladesh PM Hasina’s victory means for the India-China power play in South Asia

Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won her fourth consecutive term as leader on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) shakes hand with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid (R) after their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Dhaka on June 6, 2015. Bangladesh and India on June 6 sealed a historic land pact to swap territories, which will finally allow tens of thousands of people living in border enclaves to choose their nationality after decades of stateless limbo. AFP PHOTO/ Munir uz ZAMAN / AFP PHOTO / MUNIR UZ ZAMAN

Dhaka. Photo: AFP

(161016) -- GOA, Oct. 16, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South African President Jacob Zuma, Brazilian President Michel Temer, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay, Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and representative of Thailand pose for photo at a dialogue between BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) leaders on emerging economy cooperation in the western Indian state of Goa, Oct. 16, 2016. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei) (zhs)

Supporters of Bangladesh Awami League march in the street as they take part in a general election campaign procession in Dhaka on December 10, 2018. - There is no opposition candidate for prime minister, hundreds have been arrested and incumbent premier Sheikh Hasina stands accused of ignoring democratic checks on her power, but Bangladesh began campaigning Monday for a year-end election. (Photo by Munir UZ ZAMAN / AFP)

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gestures after casting her vote in the morning during the general election in Dhaka, Bangladesh, December 30, 2018. Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha/Handout via REUTERS NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

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Execution of retired army captain was carried out less than week after he was arrested in Dhaka
He had been a fugitive since a trial court in 1998 convicted him and 14 others and sentenced them to death



The execution of the retired captain was carried out nearly 45 years after the brutal assassination of the country’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
